Many people use services like Foursquare, turning your daily stops at the coffee shop and the grocery store into a game, with rewards. You can earn badges and of course bragging rights when you become the mayor of your local Starbucks.

This type of rewards-based design is called “gamification” and it’s not new.

A fresh take on gamification, though, is seeing designers leverage the things that make games so addictive, engaging, and motivational to change personal behaviors.

And it’s not just about selling products, driving traffic and making money. People like Dustin DiTommaso of Mad*Pow see the dynamics of gameplay as a way of helping people with real-world challenges go from inspiration, to motivation, and ultimately to action.

What if designers took what we know about game design tenets and applied them to product development and creating services that actually help people achieve meaningful goals (no disrespect to the mayor of Starbucks)? Health management, helping people save money or learn new skills, and in general, live better lives are all areas where we can use gameplay as a way of effecting personal — and even societal — change.

Dustin will offer a practical, step-by-step methodology that will be built upon throughout the day. In the end, participants together will have designed a structured behavior change game once they’ve learned the ins and outs of crafting game objectives that facilitate change, proper goal-setting, optimal challenge and reward patterns, feedback loops and more.

By the time you leave this workshop, you’ll be the mayor of creating change through gaming.